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12/10/09: Slava Fetisov, 51, to Dress for CSKA Moscow

By Jeff Z. Klein December 10, 2009 2:31 pmDecember 10, 2009 2:31 pm

The Hall of Fame defenseman Vyacheslav Fetisov, who hung up his skates after winning a second Stanley Cup at the end of the 1998 season, will lace those skates up again at the age of 51 for CSKA Moscow, the club he directs as president.

Fetisov is being forced to dress as a skater again for Friday night’s home game against Western Conference leaders SKA St. Petersburg because of a rash of injuries to CSKA’s defenders.

Fetisov is not merely a former player making an emergency comeback. On the ice he is a one-time Canada Cup, two-time Olympic and seven-time world champion; a two-time winner of the Stanley Cup and an 11-time winner of the Soviet championship.

Off the ice he helped break down the barriers that prevented players from moving to North America at the end of the Soviet era, then after retiring went on to become Russia’s minister of sport, a member of the Russian parliament, the first chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s athletes committee, a member of the K.H.L. board of directors and CSKA president.

Fetisov will wear the No. 2, the sweater he made famous when he won all those domestic titles with CSKA. The army men are currently in sixth in the West, with 52 of a possible 96 points.

If he actually gets into the game for Coach Sergei Nemchinov’s squad, his age of 51 years 7 months will make him the second-oldest player ever to play at the top level of a major domestic league. Only Gordie Howe, at 52 years, 1 week, was older.

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